Page 18 of Crowbar

“He’s not the one who did it,” Spencer said quietly, reading her the same way I had. “He’s the one who brought me here.”

She held my gaze for another second then nodded and turned back to Spencer. “X-rays first. Then we’ll talk treatment.”

They took him for imaging, and I sat in that plastic chair and stared at the wall. My wolf paced behind my ribs, restless, furious, wanting a name and a scent trail and permission to hunt. I gave it none of those things. I’d made a promise.

But promises had expiration dates. And whoever had grabbed my mate’s arm hard enough to tear muscle was operating on borrowed time.

Spencer came back forty minutes later, cradling his arm in a sling they’d fitted him with. His face was drawn, pale around the mouth, but his eyes were clearer than they’d been in the parking lot.

The X-rays showed no fracture, which was the only good news. The doctor confirmed what I’d suspected—partial tears in the rotator cuff, strained bicep tendon, significant soft tissue damage that would need weeks of rest, anti-inflammatories, and physical therapy.

“No,” Spencer said. “I just started a job, and I can’t afford medications and physical therapy.” He shot me a look that said not to offer.

We compromised on the meds. They gave him a pain pill before we left. As soon as Gunner was back in his lap, she licked the underside of his jaw then curled up on his legs, staring up at Spencer with woeful eyes.

He lifted his chin, meeting my gaze. “I had a restraining order, but it expired. He showed up, but I didn’t let him in. I stayed in the doorway. He grabbed my arm before I could close the door. That’s all that happened. That’s the whole story.”

It wasn’t the whole story. Not by a long shot. But it was more than he’d planned to give me. The fact he’d offered it without me asking told me something had shifted between the parking lot and the exam room.

“Thank you,” I said. “For telling me.”

His eyes turned wet. He blinked hard, twice, and the shine retreated. “You’re annoyingly easy to talk to. It’s a problem.”

“It’s a curse.” I drove us back to the barbeque.

Chapter Six

Spencer

My hand moved in slow motion when I waved it if front of my face. “Whoa,” I breathed, watching my fingers trail through the air like they were cutting through water. Each one left a ghost of itself behind. “That’s... that’s a lot of fingers.”

The pain pill hit somewhere between the parking lot and the plate of ribs Drift had shoved into my good hand. One minute I was sitting in a lawn chair trying to figure out how to eat with a sling, and the next the world had gone soft, like someone had wrapped reality in fleece.

Crowbar was next to me, close enough that our chairs touched. Noodles was asleep tucked against my side, a warm little furnace of fur and twitching paws. The fire pit crackled in front of us, and the smoke curled upward in patterns that were suddenly the most fascinating thing I’d ever witnessed.

“The smoke looks like a dragon,” I announced to no one in particular. “A tiny one. A baby dragon. A dragonlet.”

“Dragonlet isn’t a word,” Crowbar said.

“It is now. I just invented it. You’re welcome, English language.” I took another bite of the ribs and groaned so loudly that two men across the fire pit turned to stare. “Oh my god. Oh my god. Drift. Drift!” I pointed at the man with the spatula. “These are the greatest ribs in the history of the entire planet. Every planet. If aliens came down and tasted these ribs, they would weep. They would abandon their superior technology and open a barbecue restaurant.”

Drift looked at Crowbar with raised eyebrows.

“Pain meds kicked in,” Crowbar said.

“No, no, no, no, no.” I waved a rib bone at him. “This isn’t the drugs talking. This is my soul talking. My soul is having a religious experience. These ribs are better than sex. Well…” I paused, tilting my head. “Most sex. Some sex is pretty good. Depends on the—anyway, the point is, Drift, you are a culinary genius and I would die for you.”

“Thanks, kid,” Drift said slowly. “That’s…intense.”

“I’m an intense person.” I licked sauce off my thumb, which took three attempts because my mouth and my hand weren’t communicating on the same frequency. “I feel things deeply. Like, right now, I’m feeling this rib sauce in my bones. Is there brown sugar in this? There’s brown sugar. And something smoky. Paprika? Chipotle? Both. It’s both. You beautiful, beautiful man.”

Holler was recording me on his phone. I pointed at him with the rib bone. “You’d better get my good side.”

“Which one’s your good side?” he asked, grinning.

“All of them. Every side is my good side. I’m like a diamond. Multifaceted.”

The laughter that followed was warm, not cruel, and something in my medicated brain registered that distinction and filed it away as important. These men were laughing with me. Not at me. There was a difference, and I’d spent enough years learning that to recognize it even through a pharmaceutical haze.